Exploring the Effect of Individual Factors on Business Failure in Iranian New Established Small Businesses

Abstract

The majority of Entrepreneurship studies have focused on Business success while little information regarding Business failure exists. However our knowledge of entrepreneurship is not complete without recognition of the business failure. Also, more researches in this field have been done in developed countries and it is limited studies in those countries where economic, social, cultural and political differ. Individual factors are the main ones affecting the entrepreneurial process. This is a study on a sample of new established small businesses in industry sector. First, in qualitative study, interview analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews lead to identified four groups of individual factors including motivations, skills, capabilities, and characteristics. Then, these individual factors have been evaluated in a sample of 158 unsuccessful businesses and data analysis of 52 complete questioners pointed out that "Lack of crisis management skills" and "Lack of marketing, financial and human resource management skills" are the main individual factors affecting business failure in new established small businesses in industry sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]